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y separately published work icon A Fringe of Leaves single work   novel  
Issue Details: First known date: 1976... 1976 A Fringe of Leaves
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

"Set in Australia in the 1840s, A FRINGE OF LEAVES combines dramatic action with a finely distilled moral vision. Returning home to England from Van Diemen's land, the Bristol Maid is shipwrecked on the Queensland coast and Mrs Roxburgh is taken prisoner by a tribe of aborigines, along with the rest of the passengers and crew. In the course of her escape, she is torn by conflicting loyalties - to her dead husband, to her rescuer, to her own and to her adoptive class."

Source: Goodreads

Notes

  • Dedication: To Desmond Digby
  • Epigraph:

    'A perfect Woman, nobly planned,/To warn, to comfort, and command.'. -William Wordsworth

    Dialogue between Rat-Wife and Almers from Henrik Ibsen's Little Eyolf.

    'If there is some true good in a man, it can only be unknown to himself.' - Simone Weil

    'Love is your last chance. There is really nothing else on earth to keep you there.' -Louis Aragon

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • London,
      c
      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Jonathan Cape ,
      1976 .
      image of person or book cover 4684886468271706977.jpg
      This image has been sourced from Wikipedia
      Extent: 405p.
      Reprinted: 1977
    • Harmondsworth, Middlesex,
      c
      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Ringwood, Ringwood - Croydon - Kilsyth area, Melbourne - East, Melbourne, Victoria,: Penguin ,
      1977 .
      image of person or book cover 4194740823317251359.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 365p.
      Note/s:
      • Reprinted fourteen times by 1993.
      ISBN: 0140044094
    • New York (City), New York (State),
      c
      United States of America (USA),
      c
      Americas,
      :
      Viking ,
      1977 .
      image of person or book cover 1210097649138229621.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 405p.
      Reprinted: 1977
      Note/s:
      • Photolithographic reprint of English first edition.
    • New York (City), New York (State),
      c
      United States of America (USA),
      c
      Americas,
      :
      Avon Books ,
      1978 .
      Extent: 373p.
    • London,
      c
      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Vintage UK ,
      1997 .
      image of person or book cover 4257281297370702508.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 405p.
      ISBN: 0099749211
Alternative title: Gedile alim
Language: Hebrew
    • Tel-Aviv,
      c
      Israel,
      c
      Middle East, Asia,
      :
      'Ām 'Ôvēd ,
      1978 .
      image of person or book cover 7419353935274339147.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 373p.

Other Formats

  • Also braille and sound recording.
  • Sound recording. (2019)

Works about this Work

'Why is it that the heroine could only be white?' : Patrick White’s Eliza Fraser and the (In)visible Machinery of Whiteness Sukhendu Das , 2023 single work criticism
— Appears in: Marginality in Australian Literature 2023; (p. 177-191)
The Stench of Rotten Kangaroo : Patrick White's A Fringe of Leaves in Postcolonial Literary History Nicholas Birns , 2021 single work criticism
— Appears in: I’m Listening Like the Orange Tree : In Memory of Laurie Hergenhan 2021; (p. 89-100)
From Ellen Gluyas to Ellen Roxburgh to Mab : Shifting Identities in Patrick White's A Fringe of Leaves Hem Raj Bansal , 2016 single work criticism
— Appears in: Narratives of Estrangement and Belonging : Indo-Australian Perspectives 2016; (p. 129-151)

'This paper is an analysis of the characters in Patrick Whites' A Fringe of Leaves. Bansal states : 

'This paper seeks to unravel Ennen's consistent formulation and reformulation of her identities from her childhood to her stay with the Aboriginals and later with Jack Chance, an escaped convict. It further shows how the novelist's concern with history is not fetishized or partisan but an impartial one where a character plunges into both the worlds and leaves it to the readers to find out which one is more humane. It would further explore the issues of belongingness and nostalgia in terms of Ellen Roxburgh's shifts in locale.' (130)

'Time and Its Fellow Conspirator Space' : Patrick White's A Fringe of Leaves Brigid Rooney , 2015 single work criticism
— Appears in: Patrick White beyond the Grave : New Critical Perspectives 2015; (p. 163-177)
'...Brigid Rooney explores what she refers to as the 'chronotopic system' of the narative in White's A Fringe of Leaves (1976). (Introduction 9)
Becoming Indigenous : A Comparative Analysis of Patrick White's A Fringe of Leaves and Gail Jones' Sorry Xing Chunli , 2015 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Studies – Proceedings of the 14th International Conference of Australian Studies in China 2015; (p. 123-131)
'Drawing on Deleuze's concept of 'becoming', this paper explores the indigenizing processes of the two female protagonists in Patrick White's A Fringe of Leaves and Gail Jones' Sorry, respectively. Becoming-indigenous, as one form of becoming-minor, serves as an escape, a line of flight from the dominant molar lines of the majority, which, in these two novels, are represented b the binary oppositions of the white settlers and the Aboriginal people. The process of indigenization represents the white settlers' search for the possibility of white indigeneity, the potential for the white settlers' belonging within the land. Though focusing on different historical periods, the former on first contact, the latter on the assimilation period, both of the novels adopted the strategy of becoming as a counter-narrative and subverted the dominant European discourses, accommodating the spiritual needs of a young Australian in its continual urge towards self-definition.' (123)
Varieties of Courage Elizabeth Perkins , 1976 single work review
— Appears in: LiNQ , vol. 5 no. 2 1976; (p. 91-98)

— Review of Miss Herbert (The Suburban Wife) Christina Stead , 1976 single work novel ; A Fringe of Leaves Patrick White , 1976 single work novel
A Woman's Life and Love Leonie Kramer , 1976 single work review
— Appears in: Quadrant , November vol. 20 no. 11 1976; (p. 62-63)

— Review of A Fringe of Leaves Patrick White , 1976 single work novel
Nature and Legend John McLaren , 1976 single work review
— Appears in: Overland , no. 65 1976; (p. 71-72)

— Review of A Fringe of Leaves Patrick White , 1976 single work novel
[Review] A Fringe of Leaves John Barnes , 1976 single work review
— Appears in: New Statesman , 10 September vol. 42 no. 1976; (p. 34)

— Review of A Fringe of Leaves Patrick White , 1976 single work novel
[Review] A Fringe of Leaves P. Beer , 1976 single work review
— Appears in: Listener , vol. 96 no. 1976; (p. 409-10)

— Review of A Fringe of Leaves Patrick White , 1976 single work novel
'The Bee in the Hive' : Women and Knowledge in Patrick White's The Tree of Man and A Fringe of Leaves Julie Mullaney , 1999 single work criticism
— Appears in: A Fringe of Papers : Offshore Perspectives on Australian History and Literature 1999; (p. 87-105)
Examines the construction of woman and the status of her knowledge within the pre-pastoral, pastoral, and anti-pastoral worlds evoked in the two novels by White.
Patrick White's Aesthetic Noel Macainsh , 1984 single work criticism
— Appears in: LiNQ , [Triple Issue] vol. 12 no. 1-3 1984; (p. 55-70) The Pathos of Distance 1992; (p. 304-319)
Patrick White and the Aesthetics of Death Noel Macainsh , 1987 single work criticism
— Appears in: LiNQ , vol. 15 no. 2 1987; (p. 2-14) The Pathos of Distance 1992; (p. 290-303)
Patrick White: An International Perspective John Colmer , 1991 single work criticism
— Appears in: Breaking Circles 1991; (p. 182-196)
y separately published work icon The Structure of Two Novels by Patrick White : The Eye of the Storm (1973) and A Fringe of Leaves (1976) David Kelly , 1979 Z1163297 1979 single work thesis
Last amended 5 Sep 2022 12:01:35
Settings:
  • Queensland,
  • Tasmania,
  • Cornwall,
    c
    England,
    c
    c
    United Kingdom (UK),
    c
    Western Europe, Europe,
  • New South Wales,
  • ca. 1830-1840
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